


Like Puzzle Pieces

by tiny_white_hats



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Fluff, Season 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-05
Updated: 2012-10-05
Packaged: 2017-11-15 16:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/529281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiny_white_hats/pseuds/tiny_white_hats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Willow likes to look at Oz." Willow/Oz fluff ficlet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Puzzle Pieces

**Author's Note:**

> The first Buffy fanfic I ever wrote. A year and a half later, Willow and Oz are still OTP.
> 
> Disclaimer: Not my characters, not my setting. I own nothing here.

Willow likes to look at Oz. When she’s sure he’s not looking, she gently follows the lines of his face with her eyes. She traces the smooth slope of his nose down until her gaze reaches his lips and lingers. Quickly, she tears her eyes away, because even looking at his lips makes Willow want desperately to catch them with her own. There is a time and a place for kissing Oz, but researching another potential apocalypse (the fourth this year, and it’s only early March) with the rest of the Scoobies is neither the time nor place for smoochies. So, instead, she combs her gaze through the hair she loves so much, remembering the feel of it between her fingers. Today, it’s a bright carroty orange, not too far from her own shade.  
“Don’t tell anyone,” he had whispered a few days earlier to Willow, holding her close as he walked her to English, “but this is my natural hair color. It gets boring, but these days, I’m liking it best.”

Orange is Willow’s favorite of Oz’s myriad hair colors, because she likes to think that they’re a matching set. Sometimes she muses that they do match, not in the way that twins do, but like two puzzle pieces, two integral parts, fitting together perfectly to make one impossibly wonderful whole. The thought makes her feel sappy and nearly giddy, like a fool in love. She suspects that au natural may be Oz’s favorite hair as of late for the same reasons; when she told him why she liked his hair orange, he had given her that rare grin, his eyes lighting up like the 4th of July, like they only did for her. Now she searches his eyes, looking for something, but finds only concentration and a contentedness that puts her at ease.  
As if Oz could sense her eyes on his, he looks up to meet Willow’s gaze. She blushes, embarrassed at being caught neglecting her research, and Oz quirks the half-smile she loves so much at her.

“What’re you looking at, baby?” he asks fondly, taking her hand and lacing his fingers through her own. His eyes, which Willow can read like storybooks, glow green with affection, amusement, contentment and a million other beautiful things. The smile in his eyes makes her knees weak and turns her insides into a happy melty mush of the best variety. Hiding behind the smile, she sees a shadow of the wolf, and decides she loves it just as much as the rest of Oz.

“Just enjoying the view.” She grins back at her boyfriend before leaning in to steal a quick kiss. Willow knows she’ll do anything in her power to keep this potential apocalypse from being successful, because losing Oz would be mind-numbingly terrible. She’s happier than she’s been in a long time, and doesn’t plan on letting a little thing like Armageddon take that away from her.

“I’m never letting you go, you know,” she whispers right against his ear, placing a quick kiss on his earlobe. She can still feel his shiver when she drops her head to his shoulder, a moment later.

“Mutual.” Oz presses a quick kiss to her hair and wraps his arms around her, pulling her tight to his chest. Across the library, the others worry and fuss over uncertain futures, but here, the two young lovers are at peace, happy to just hold each other like lifelines, until they’ve weathered this storm.

Oz moves the book to sit on both their laps and returns to his research. Willow, exhausted from all night Oz-Watch the past three nights, relaxes completely and falls asleep in her boyfriend’s arms. Oz smiles as he sees her, and thinks of perfectly harmonized chords and of puzzle pieces, and how some people just fit.

fin.


End file.
